Eugene Debs

DEBS, EUGENE

Labor leader, presidential candidate, author, and radical, social, and political agitator, Eugene Debs employed a combination of self-determination, grit, defiance, and risk-taking to play a sometimes pivotal role in American law from the late 1890s through the early twentieth century.

The son of Alsatian immigrants, Eugene Vic-
tor Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on
November 5, 1855. As a young teenager growing
up in Terre Haute, Debs took a job as a railway
fireman, where he became active in the Brother-
hood of Locomotive Firemen (BLF). Although
Debs left his job as a railway fireman four years
later, he remained active in the BLF, undertaking
increased leadership responsibilities. Debs then
was elected to serve two terms as the city clerk
for Terre Haute and one term in the Indiana
House of Representatives. In winning all three
elections, Debs leveraged his role as grand secre-
tary and treasurer in the BLF to garner votes
from working class laborers.

In 1893, Debs broke with the tradition of
limiting membership in craft unions to skilled
artisans by helping found the American Railway
Union, which organized both skilled and
unskilled workers. Debs believed that labor’s
greatest strength lay more in its sheer numbers
and less in the individual skills of its members.

The following year Debs, now president of
the American Railway Union, led a strike against
the Pullman Palace Car Company, which was
owned by George Pullman and located in Pull-
man, Illinois, a company town in which nearly
all residents worked for Pullman. Pullman also
provided housing units for his workers to rent.
In 1894, Pullman began laying off workers, cut-
ting wages, and withholding their paychecks as
payment for unpaid rent.

The Debs-led strike, known as the Pullman
Boycott, turned violent when workers began pil-
laging, rioting, and burning railway cars. Rail-
way strikes erupted across the Midwest, forcing
much of the nation’s railroad system to shut
down. President GROVER CLEVELAND deployed 12,000 troops to quell the strike in Pullman.

After two workers were killed in clashes with the
troops, President Cleveland declared the strike
over. Workers were allowed to return to work
only if they promised not to unionize again.
A few weeks before Cleveland deployed the
troops, a federal court had issued an INJUNCTION
ordering Debs and the other union leaders
to cease and desist their concerted activities
against Pullman. Debs ignored the injunction,
and was eventually arrested and cited for CONTEMPT
of court. Tried before a judge without a
jury and defended by CLARENCE DARROW, Debs
lost and was sentenced to six months in jail.
Debs challenged his conviction on the ground
that he had been denied the SIXTH AMENDMENT
right to a jury trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Debs’s
argument, finding that he and the other union
leaders had formed an unlawful conspiracy in
restraint of trade (In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 15
S.Ct. 900, 39 L.Ed. 1092 [U.S. 1895]). The
injunction obtained by the federal government
was an equitable remedy, the Supreme Court
said, and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury
trial does not apply in equitable proceedings. To
preserve their power in equitable proceedings,
judges must have the authority to punish violations
through the power of contempt, the Court
concluded. Debs was forced to serve out the full
six months of his jail sentence.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Debs
served to legitimize Cleveland’s deployment of
the strike-breaking troops, even though the
Court did not expressly weigh in on that issue.
Almost 40 years would pass before industrial
unions would receive increased recognition and
protection from U.S. law.
Nonetheless, Debs continued advocating
unions as the best means to advance labor’s
interests. The same year that Debs led the PULLMAN
STRIKE, President Cleveland signed into
law an act that declared the first Monday in September
as a holiday to honor the American
laborer. Despite the concession from the White
House, Debs forged his own brand of politics by
organizing the Social Democratic Party of
America in 1897. As its candidate for president
in 1900, he received 96,116 votes. Thereafter he
spent most of his time as a lecturer and organizer
in the socialist movement, although he purported
to be less interested in the political
underpinnings of the movement and instead, viewed SOCIALISM as a means to guarantee dignity
and equality for the average worker. He was
the presidential candidate of the SOCIALIST
PARTY in 1904, 1908, and 1912.
In 1905, Debs’s politics moved further to the
left when he helped form the INDUSTRIAL
WORKERS OF THE WORLD (IWW), also known as
the Wobblies. The IWW was an inclusive organization
that sought to create “One Big Union,” by
welcoming African Americans, immigrants, and
women. The IWW promoted a rigorous standard
of racial equality, and attempted to educate
workers about the ways in which capitalists used
race to undermine labor interests. Debs marketed
IWW to workers as a radical alternative to
the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR led by
SAMUEL GOMPERS.
In 1907, Debs was named associate editor for
the progressive magazine Appeal to Reason, published
in Girard, Kansas. For the next five years
he received a salary of $100 per week. The
weekly magazine achieved a circulation of several
hundred thousand due in part to the powerful
writing of Debs.
In 1918, during WORLD WAR I, Debs was
convicted of violating the ESPIONAGE ACT OF
1917, after he gave a speech in Canton, Ohio,
encouraging listeners to obstruct the draft. The
Supreme Court upheld the conviction, notwithstanding
Debs’s argument that the federal law
violated his rights to free speech guaranteed by
the FIRST AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution
(Debs v. United States, 39 S.Ct. 252, 249 U.S. 211,
63 L.Ed. 566 [U.S. 1919]). Debs served two years
in prison, from 1919 to 1921.While in prison he
again ran for president on the Socialist ticket in
1920 and received almost one million votes.
Debs died on October 20, 1926, in Elmhurst,
Illinois. He was survived by his wife of 41 years,
Kate Metzel. They had no children. In 1962, the
Debs Foundation was established in Terre
Haute, as a memorial to Eugene Debs, and as an
archive and research center for the study of the
social sciences, and labor and political history.
Each year the foundation bestows the Eugene V.
Debs Award on an individual “who has contributed
to the advancement of the causes of
industrial unionism, social justice, or world
peace.”

FURTHER READINGS
Debs, Eugene V. 1918. “The Canton,Ohio, Anti-War Speech.”
Available online at (accessed July 3, 2003).
Eugene V. Debs Foundation. Available online at (accessed June 30,
2003).
Ginger, Ray. 1992. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene
Debs. Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson Univ. Press.
Papke, David Ray. 1999. The Pullman Case: The Clash of
Labor and Capital in Industrial America. Lawrence:
Univ. Press of Kansas.